United Equipment Accessories offers slip rings and custom solutions to the oil and gas industry. Downhole applications typically experience high vibration and high heat. These slip rings also require components with small dimensions. Older technologies have attempted to address these downhole challenges but are not perfect solutions. One oil and gas company came to UEA to find a better solution for a canted spring in their downhole tool.

During this project, the customer brought up multiple issues with their current design. First, the downhole tool experienced signal loss. The canted spring design also created metal shavings within the tool because the brush material was too abrasive. Finally, the lifecycle of the product was extremely short because of the issues with the canted spring. With our new design, we created a drop-in solution with a custom brush assembly.

This brush assembly was able to mount right into the customer's current product design. The extremely tight dimensions were a challenge, but our engineering team developed a custom solution. This solution needed to include a slip fit assembly, meaning the customer had to slide this over the existing shaft and insulators. Our engineering team came up with a solution that modified the brush faces by adding a chamfer to the edges, allowing the assembly to slide in effortlessly and be positioned correctly without added assembly time.

The new brush assembly eliminates the signal loss and abrasiveness caused by the canted spring. Our custom brush solution with machined high-temperature plastic, a custom fit, and modified brushes made a highly effective solution for our customer. We were able to increase the life cycle of the downhole tool, but if the customer did need to install new brushes, this is something that the customer or the end-user can do themselves.

The UEA team is always looking for new ways to help our customers with their challenges and make their products more efficient. This scenario is one of the ways we strive for innovation throughout our organization. Contact us to create your custom solution today!

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